Essay on MP3 File Sharing Hurts America

Pirating music, regardless of reason, is illegal in the United States and holds great penalties. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the entity in charge of enforcing copyright violations. According to their website, “Criminal charges may leave you with a felony record, accompanied by up to five years of jail time and fines up to $250,000” (RIAA). With charges at that rate, the public would be expected to pay the $0.99 fee for a song on iTunes rather than face the repercussions, but the rate only increased. The problem lies in the actual enforcement of the laws. Mass CD distribution can be sourced back to a seller and exploited in that manner, but the average person in this

According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), 30 billion songs were illegally downloaded between 2004 and 2009. Even with sites like iTunes and Rhapsody offering legal downloads, peer-to-peer file sharing still exists. Illegally downloading music has had a significant impact on the music industry resulting in a loss of profits and jobs, and changing how music is delivered to the masses. (Adkins, n.d.) Showing that even having the ethically correct option P2P sharing of illegal media is still thriving. The RIAA reports that music sales in the United States have dropped

With broadband Internet service becoming more accessible and affordable, more people are looking to download audio over the web. File sharing first came into the public eye with the popularization of MP3 files in the mid- to late 1990s. MP3s would commonly be uploaded to free web space accounts such as Geocities and Tripod (Wikipedia, par.3). This process only worked for a small amount of time due to limited file space on websites. When peer-to-peer software was created, file sharing became easily usable by any Internet user. Napster, created in 1999, was the first major P2P file sharing tool and popularized file sharing for the masses (Wikipedia, par.3). After Napster was taken to trial for copyright violations, the peer-2-peer movement looked to be going out of business. Then a new wave of file sharing came along. These websites offered audio

The parties finally reached a settlement of 105 million dollars distributed to the various companies respectively. While the record companies asked for the maximum penalty of 1.4 billion dollars, they hoped that the huge victory would show other piracy sites and services that what they’re doing is not a game. Illegal downloads hurt the people who have put in the hard work, day in and day out. The RIAA’s chairman, Mitch Bainwol said it best, “As the court heard during the last two weeks, Limewire wreaked enormous damage on the music community, helping contribute to thousands of lost jobs and few opportunities for aspiring artists.”

For many years illegal file sharing and music swapping has been going on. Two very popular cases are the MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster case and the A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster case. Both cases differ in many ways however they also have similarities. A lot of music and other sorts of entertainment are being distributed for free all over the internet. What some people do not think of are the consequences that will be faced if they get caught. Not only is the distributor at risk for getting caught but those of us that download the software illegally can be charged.

According to the New York Time article, Major Record Labels Settle Suit With LimeWire written by Ben Sisario, the settlement for this suit was $105 million which was far from the $1.4 billion the labels had sought as a maximum penalty. This article also explains that the companies are hoping that the case will act as a deterrent (2). The damage LimeWire created negatively affected the artist community.

LimeWire, as many know, was a free peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing program. In August of 2006, LimeWire found themselves in some major legal trouble when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) demanded LimeWire be ceased for good. In the suit, the RIAA accused LimeWire of operating a web service ““devoted essentially” to piracy by allowing users to upload and download songs without permission.” (“Major Record Labels Settle Suit with LimeWire”).

In the article “Internet Piracy Harms Artists”, Phil Gardson explains how internet piracy such as online music sharing and other forms of copyrighting music hurts hardworking singers and songwriters. He also asserts that it is imperative that Congress should in act a law against these types of crimes to help protect artists.

Digital piracy on music has been a majorly disputed affair for the last eighteen years, about whether or not it favors the musical artists or affects them in a negative fashion. One of the many sides of the Digital piracy controversy expounds that it benefits the artist(s) by giving them a great deal of exposure that they may not have received had they not downloaded it for free, which in turn makes for a very significant acquisition in terms of sales on their part.

The music industry has undergone radical changes since the end of the 1990’s, largely a function of the internet and its effects on sales and copyright. Besides placing artists and their music on the world stage, the internet also permitted the downloading of music from free-file- exchange networks. A parallel and equally worrisome, phenomenon is record pirating, a practice made easier by the proliferation of CD burners and access to high speed internet. Unauthorized downloading and pirating circumvent intellectual property laws and result in reduced sales. “In Atlantic Canada, average annual household expenditures on CDs and audio cassettes dropped by 27 percent between 1996 and 2001, from $96.00 to $70.00.”

Christopher Jones’ article “Metallica Rips Napster” is in an early summary of the 2000, Metallica v. Napster, Inc., California lawsuit. The lawsuit included the peer-to-peer file sharing website, Napster, and University of Southern California, Indiana University, and Yale University. Most people don’t even think about file sharing, in this day and age it is generally an everyday behavior. It is very simple for a document or file to be shared between friends or even strangers over the internet. However, in April of the year 2000 the heavy metal band Metallica and the peer-to-peer audio file sharing website Napster were in the center of a lawsuit that would change how online file sharing works forever.

Because of this the RIAA turned to targeting the users downloading the music. Thousands of cases have been filed against "music pirates" and in many cases the criminals are college students such as you or me. In fact, college students are one of the prime targets of the RIAA but has nailed one of the most prolific file-traders in the U.S., filing a lawsuit against 12-year-old Brianna LaHara.

Introduction: Setting the trend for the future, the distribution and consumption of recorded music transformed dramatically with the launching of Apple’s iTunes in 2001. The proliferation of online music subscription services and other music sharing services exerted a great pressure on the conventional music distribution business model. Combined with this transformation, piracy of digital music had a profound impact on the whole industry. These worsening conditions in the market place for recorded music forced both established and upcoming new artists to experiment with new ways of selling their music.

Though Jenny, a thirteen-year-old from Kent, thinks a little different when she responded, "I used to download music all the time, but now people are getting sued in America and I'm not brave enough to do it any more"(CBBC). So the action taken by the RIAA has changed some people's views about the downloading of songs, but there sure hasn't stopped the majority. A lot of the people do not even think of sharing music as stealing, when technically they are getting the music for free.

I believe that at the heart of this controversy is a drive to bring music production into the twenty-first century. Making CD's more accessible, economical and usable benefits all everyone except maybe the CD producers, in the end. Listeners can access music when, where and how they want to for less money, as the have grown accustomed to doing. Musicians cut out the middleman, allowing them to keep more of the profit. This is undoubtedly the future of the industry. While companies are searching for ways to hold on to 90 percent of the profit and to continue to combat illegal downloading, others are negotiating new terrain